2015-01-13

NCAA Football Power Rankings, Final

There were only 2 games that took place between these rankings and week 19; North Dakota State won the I-AA Championship, and of course, Ohio State beat Oregon to win the inaugural College Football Playoff. The strength of schedule boost kept the top 4 teams in the top 4 despite 3 additional losses. In fact, the only FBS teams that moved around this week were #40-#43, with #40 and #41 swapping, as well as #42 and #43.

As I mentioned before, the College Football Playoff almost seemed designed to game my rankings. My strength of schedule component shoots sky high in a playoff, virtually guaranteeing the team that wins the final game will be my #1.

My expanded rankings of 720 teams - which I don't publish, but I do take a look at from time to time - finally look almost right. My expanded rankings top 4 are as follows:

If #3 and #4 were swapped it'd look just perfect, with champs ranked from the top division to the bottom, but Colorado State-Pueblo went 14-1 while UW-Whitewater was 15-0, helping them just barely edge their way into the #3 slot.

I've now completed my 4th year of rankings teams on my blog. In 2011-12, I had LSU at the top and Alabama at #3, even though the BCS title game was Alabama over LSU. LSU beat Alabama earlier in the year, and my rankings don't really care when a game was played, so those sort of canceled out. After that, my #1 team agreed with the championship game each year, with Alabama in 2012-13, Florida State in 2013-14, and now Ohio State in 2014-15.

That'll do it for this year. It was a fun college football season, with Missouri hanging onto SEC title hopes, and possibly playoff hopes, until the very end. Alabama's disappointing playoff exit will probably cost the SEC it's unofficial automatic berth next year, though, so every team is going to have to really prove they belong in the playoff.